Mother: Girl at centre of debate over brain death dies

A girl at the centre of the medical and religious debate over brain death has died after surgery in New Jersey, her mother said today.

Nailah Winkfield said doctors declared her daughter Jahi McMath dead from excessive bleeding and liver failure after an operation to treat an intestinal issue.

McMath had been in a vegetative state since December 2013, when a California coroner ruled that the 13-year-old girl died after suffering irreversible brain damage during an operation to remove her tonsils.

Winkfield refused to accept the conclusion and moved the girl to New Jersey, where she has been kept on life support and received care. The state accommodates religions that don't recognise brain death.

"Jahi wasn't brain dead or any kind of dead," Winkfield said. "She was a girl with a brain injury and she deserved to be cared for like any other child who had a brain injury."